"There are some able men in the National Assembly," writes the American minister, "yet the best heads among them would not be injured by experience, and, unfortunately, there are great numbers who, with much imagination, have little knowledge, judgment, or reflection."It would be just as sensible to select eleven hundred notables from an inland province and entrust them to the repair of an old frigate.
They would conscientiously break the vessel up, and the frigate they would construct in its place would founder before it left port.
If they would only consult the pilots and professional shipbuilders!
-- There are several of such to be found around them, whom they cannot suspect, for most of them are foreigners, born in free countries, impartial, sympathetic, and, what is more, unanimous.
The Minister of the United States writes, two months before the convocation of the States-General:[20]
"I, a republican, and just, as it were, emerged from that Assembly which has formed one of the most republican of republican constitutions, - I preach incessantly respect for the prince, attention to the rights of the nobility, and moderation, not only in the object, but also in the pursuit of it."Jefferson, a democrat and radical, expresses himself no differently. At the time of the oath of the Tennis Court, he redoubles his efforts to induce Lafayette and other patriots to make some arrangement with the King to secure freedom of the press, religious, liberty, trial by jury, the habeas corpus, and a national legislature, - things which he could certainly be made to adopt, -and then to retire into private life, and let these institutions act upon the condition of the people until they had rendered it capable of further progress, with the assurance that there would be no lack of opportunity for them to obtain still more.
"This was all," he continues, "that I thought your countrymen able to bear soberly and usefully."Arthur Young, who studies the moral life of France so conscientiously, and who is so severe in depicting old abuses, cannot comprehend the conduct of the Commons.
"To set aside practice for theory . . . in establishing the interests of a great kingdom, in securing freedom to 25,000,000 of people, seems to me the very acme of imprudence, the very quintessence of insanity."Undoubtedly, now that the Assembly is all-powerful, it is to be hoped that it will be reasonable:
"I will not allow myself to believe for a moment that the representatives of the people can ever so far forget their duty to the French nation, to humanity, and their own fame, as to suffer any inordinate and impracticable views - any visionary or theoretic systems - . . . to turn aside their exertions from that security which is in their hands, to place on the chance and hazard of public commotion and civil war the invaluable blessings which are certainly in their power. I will not conceive it possible that men who have eternal fame within their grasp will place the rich inheritance on the cast of a die, and, losing the venture, be damned among the worst and most profligate adventurers that ever disgraced humanity."As their plan becomes more definite the remonstrances become more decided, and all the expert judges point out to them the importance of the wheels which they are willfully breaking.
"As they have[21] hitherto felt severely the authority exercised over them in the name of their princes, every limitation of that authority seems to them desirable. Never having felt the evils of too weak an executive, the disorders to be apprehended from anarchy make as yet no impression" -- "They want an American Constitution,[22] but with a King instead of a President, without reflecting they have no American citizens to support that Constitution. . . If they have the good sense to give the nobles, as nobles, some portion of the national power, this free constitution will probably last, But otherwise it will degenerate either into a pure monarchy, or a vast republic, or a democracy.
Will the latter last? I doubt it. I am sure that it will not, unless the whole nation is changed."A little later, when they renounce a parliamentary monarchy to put in its place "a royal democracy," it is at once explained to them that such an institution applied to France can produce nothing but anarchy, and finally end in despotism.
"Nowhere[23] has liberty proved to be stable without a sacrifice of its excesses, without some barrier to its own omnipotence. . . .
Under this miserable government . . . the people, soon weary of storms, and abandoned without legal protection to their seducers or to their oppressors, will shatter the helm, or hand it over to some audacious hand that stands ready to seize it."Events occur from month to month in fulfillment of these predictions, and the predictions grow gloomier and more gloomy. It is a flock of wild birds:[24]